I feel like I want to apologize for the quality of these postcards. I wish they had been better ones, and that I could have sent you images of sunsets and palm trees and dazzling flamingos.
At first, you place the fruit very methodically around the house. A mango in the microwave. Limes replacing lightbulbs. A grapefruit in the coffee pot.
They had changed enormously in the time I’d been gone. They’d endured an enormous loss without me. They had mourned without me. They had come together to heal - memorials, tributes, fundraisers, vigils, community service drives - all without me.
It happened on the corner of 147thand Miller, beneath the long branches of an oak hanging over the corner. It happened often enough— usually to white kids crossing U.S.1 in front of the University of Miami or other tourists on The Beach—but seldom in this residential area, and never on this intersection.